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Shelf Life - Neo Toyko


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JimmPantsu



Joined: 13 Sep 2010
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:39 am Reply with quote
Kimiko_0 wrote:
JimmPantsu wrote:
For the Code B BDs I use my BD-Player and for the Code A BDs I use my BD-Drive in my PC which is connected via HDMI with my TV

Ah, I see. Yes, I suppose you can change the region setting of BD drives the same way as DVD drives.
I only have one BD drive myself, but since there are no programs to watch region-coded BDs with for Linux anyway, I end up ripping them to harddisk instead.


Yeah, you could change the region setting but I use a programm so that I can use the BD drive for all BDs. So I can make reviews for my Blog.

Quote:
I may have to hate you for owning Garden Of Sinners though. That's about the only exception I'd make for ridiculous Japanese pricing, but it was sold out before I even discovered the awesomeness of it Sad


It war really expansive but the Box is worth the Money^^ I was surprised that it was sold out so quick.
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daveriley



Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 117
Location: Philadelphia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:40 am Reply with quote
Man, people be hatin' on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. For my money, I'd take it over Summer Wars any day of the week. Summer Wars was a bit too heavy on the "ganbare! everyone band together!" attitude that Japan so loves. It messages, focusing on family values and put-your-nose to-the-grind-stone, fell completely flat to me. Summer Wars affected me pretty much not at all. That is maybe a reason to dislike it more than something that is actually bad.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time on the other hand, dude, I loved that movie! It might have something to do with "teen starts out as charming and irascible ne'er do well but eventually learns about personal responsibility" being my favorite plot of anything ever (see: FLCL). Makoto was completely charming. The guy in Summer Wars? The only character trait of his I remember is "good at math."

But I do agree the ending of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was upsetting. The writing was so good up until that point and then they dumped like fifteen minutes of really hammy exposition on you. I don't think the ideas they were trying to convey were bad or too complicated, but man, you can't just have a character sit you down on a bench and go "here's the entire plot" unless you are watching a detective movie.

I will always root for movies like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (In Japanese we call it A-Toki o Kakeru A-Shōjo(chan)), movies with a really small scale, concerned with a really small cast of characters, and -- personal bias -- starring a hyperactive teen who nobody gets. I remember what it was like to be a hyperactive teen who nobody gets! I don't remember what it was like to be a faceless and painfully shy math nerd with a wacky, outrageous family, so Summer Wars never had a chance.

I really enjoy characters like Makoto because, about ten years too late, it says "you were not the only person who felt this way in high school." That's a feel-good moment way more satisfying than the largely faceless cast of Summer Wars hacking the Gibson.

And if I had a time machine, hell yeah I would have done karaoke for six days straight. That was adorable!

As for 2040, it's probably wasted effort to defend it, but, dude, at least it tried. The characters in the OVA have so little characterization that it could be considered negative characterization. The only person that has a character trait beyond "aerobics instructor" or "likes cake" is Priss, whose defining characteristic is "gets mad when people kill her friends, a event that happens with alarming regularity, so often that you probably should not be her friend, even if she bribes you with irresistible cake, NENE."

Meanwhile, 2040 reaches for the brass ring, with plenty of Greek mythology references, and a super sweet microwave gun, and making Sylia completely insane, and one of those Aliens "THEY'RE ALREADY INSIDE THE ROOM" moments, and something called THE DRAGON LINE, a pretty cool mid-season reveal re: the hard suits, and that awesome part in the first episode where Priss descends upon a boomer as one would in a samurai movie.

Plus it has a sweet episode about a dude who gets his brain transplanted into a robot and cuts a city-wide swathe of destruction trying to get home to see his wife. Yeah, it's got some pretty bad animation. So what? Nene's still terrible, yeah, but Priss and Sylia are ratcheted up enough to compensate.

And I'm not hating on the original, obviously I like that show too, but it gets kind of old when Priss has to spend an entire episode killing the SECOND lesbian vampire robot.

Oh! Before I forget: robot dinosaurs on the moon.

Seems like a good enough place to end my screed.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:16 pm Reply with quote
Rutilcaper wrote:
The only person that has a character trait beyond "aerobics instructor" or "likes cake" is Priss, whose defining characteristic is "gets mad when people kill her friends, a event that happens with alarming regularity, so often that you probably should not be her friend, even if she bribes you with irresistible cake, NENE."

As much as I enjoyed the original, I can only applaud the manner in which you have summarised it.
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bravetailor



Joined: 30 May 2009
Posts: 817
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Rutilcaper wrote:


The Girl Who Leapt Through Time on the other hand, dude, I loved that movie! It might have something to do with "teen starts out as charming and irascible ne'er do well but eventually learns about personal responsibility" being my favorite plot of anything ever (see: FLCL). Makoto was completely charming. The guy in Summer Wars? The only character trait of his I remember is "good at math."

.


Finding a character "charming" is not a character trait, it's an opinion! Laughing

To be honest, my big problem with Hosoda's protagonists is that they are always "average Joes/Jills." Yes, the guy in Summer Wars is good at math, but like you implied, he's just really ordinary in personality. Unfortunately, I also felt Makoto was pretty ordinary as well. "I'm a regular girl! I don't particularly excel at much, but I do have some friends and stuff! Look look, we're ordinary people. Just like most of YOU in the audience!"

She's like that ordinary girl in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, where there's nothing particularly special about her and she has the most ORDINARY type of concerns and emotions.
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Macron One



Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Posts: 151
Location: Netherlands
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:04 pm Reply with quote
Anime World Order wrote:
Also: Bubblegum 2040 is digital animation, just as Erin said it was. It aired concurrently with Steam Detectives, a somewhat forgettable Kia Asamiya story that is only remembered because it was the first all-digital production. The shift wasn't instantaneous across the board, and the fact that 2040 cels do exist suggests the production wasn't 100% digital. There are, after all, Serial Experiments Lain cels. Whether any of these are genuine is beyond my expertise, though the lack of pencil sketches is often telling.


Hmmm.. while the series definitely uses a number of digital shots, based on the sheer amount of BGC 2040 production art that's out there (we're not talking a handful of post-production relizu here, but literally thousands upon thousands of handpainted production cels, some of them with the original matching BG) i'm inclined to believe that the series was primarily produced using cel animation. My own BGC 2040 cel is a handpainted two-layer image of Priss (or rather her back) and Leon, accompanied by a douga of Leon's eyes. It's a rather unattractive cel actually, which pretty much eliminates any possibilty of it being a fan cel or post-production cel, as those tend to be made based upon the most eyecatching snapshots from the series.

Heck, just look at the volume of BGC 2040 production cels that can be found in celshops and cel collector's galleries alone. This kind of quantity is generally indicative of a mostly cel-animated production:

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daveriley



Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 117
Location: Philadelphia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:57 pm Reply with quote
bravetailor wrote:
Finding a character "charming" is not a character trait, it's an opinion! Laughing
Well, it's accurate to say it's an opinion whether or not you found her actually charming, but she's clearly meant to be a lovable klutz, that's not opinion.

Re: Plain Jane protagonists, why shouldn't there be room for that in anime? The reason I liked the movie so much is because Makoto was immediately resonant with my experience. This is not the same reaction I have to shows like Cowboy Bebop or Golgo 13. Even though I love those shows I am not a space bounty hunter or an international assassin. I enjoy the extreme fantasy of those characters and I like the situations they get into, but that's not the only experience I want out of consuming any media, let alone just anime. Average people acting in the way average people do can be very profound.

Which is maybe another reason to prefer Makoto over Math Guy and his family, a group composed entirely of badasses who are the pinnacles of their respective fields.
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ashez2ashes



Joined: 12 Dec 2006
Posts: 44
PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:05 am Reply with quote
How could you watch One Piece and miss several main characters' backstories? That's a hugely important aspect of One Piece.
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:37 pm Reply with quote
ashez2ashes wrote:
How could you watch One Piece and miss several main characters' backstories? That's a hugely important aspect of One Piece.

I didn't miss them?

Macron One wrote:
Nope! It's definitely good old handpainted cel animation.
My cel is a lame shot of Priss's back, but here's an impressive selection of BGC 2040 cels from another collector's gallery.

Well dog my cats.

Anime World Order wrote:
Also: Bubblegum 2040 is digital animation, just as Erin said it was. I...The shift wasn't instantaneous across the board, and the fact that 2040 cels do exist suggests the production wasn't 100% digital. There are, after all, Serial Experiments Lain cels. Whether any of these are genuine is beyond my expertise, though the lack of pencil sketches is often telling.

I'm glad you piped in on this, as I was sure I'd heard Justin complaining about it. Also I can usually tell cell animation by the dust on the cells.

Daryl's probably right, some episodes were digital, others may not have been. Any non-digital scenes would yield a lot of cells onto the collector's market.

pachy_boy wrote:
Are co-ed friendships that age that weird? I've known both boys and girls that were like Makoto, in that who they deemed their friends were just so and didn't think or care about anything beyond that. Maybe it's just me, but I sympathized with her surprised with the one guy's confession and her following confusion/struggle with it afterwards.

Co-ed friendships aren't weird, but we are talking about a movie, and a lot of time relationships happen in movies in the course of two hours...

In my personal experience as an adolescent, I had a lot of guy friends who I wouldn't want to date, but I did usually consider whether or not I would date them at one time or another. It seems Makoto has never considered dating anyone at all, or that her guy friends might be attracted to her as a lady.
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